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“Who am I kidding?
I should drop this act of "nothing is about me". I am writng to you also because I need a home. And, as disarming as it may be, my only chance to build it is with words and to do it with you. Let me go further. I need to be able to tell you who I am now. I need to find out how to speak of the self without the fear of appearing as the proud of victim of the glorious survivor.... [...] After being unhomed, a stranger learns that home is not a question of what she remembers but who remembers her. I need you to remember me. I need you to hear me so that I too am audible to myself. I need to know not necessarily where I will go next but with whom.”
― Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century
I should drop this act of "nothing is about me". I am writng to you also because I need a home. And, as disarming as it may be, my only chance to build it is with words and to do it with you. Let me go further. I need to be able to tell you who I am now. I need to find out how to speak of the self without the fear of appearing as the proud of victim of the glorious survivor.... [...] After being unhomed, a stranger learns that home is not a question of what she remembers but who remembers her. I need you to remember me. I need you to hear me so that I too am audible to myself. I need to know not necessarily where I will go next but with whom.”
― Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century
“What he [Pasolini] sees is how we all turn a blind eye to evil because we are comfortable and we want to stay that way. We are sleepwalkers like the children in Salo' are sleepwalkers. He attacks modernity, he puts it on trial. He thinks consumerism is a new fascism because there is so much vilence hidden inside it, because it destroys nature and natural behaviour.”
― The Silver Book
― The Silver Book
“I wasn't Christian enough.
I wasn't Hindu enough.
I wasn't communist enough.
I wasn't enough.
It came as a relief. It liberated me and set me walking. For years after that I wandered through forests and river valleys, villages and border towns, to try to better understand my country. As I travelled, I wrote. That was the beginning of my restless, unruly life as a seditious, traitor-writer,
Free woman, Free writing. Like Mother Mary taught me.
I hadn't just avoided the gilded cage. I had blown it to smthereens.”
― Mother Mary Comes to Me
I wasn't Hindu enough.
I wasn't communist enough.
I wasn't enough.
It came as a relief. It liberated me and set me walking. For years after that I wandered through forests and river valleys, villages and border towns, to try to better understand my country. As I travelled, I wrote. That was the beginning of my restless, unruly life as a seditious, traitor-writer,
Free woman, Free writing. Like Mother Mary taught me.
I hadn't just avoided the gilded cage. I had blown it to smthereens.”
― Mother Mary Comes to Me
“My beautiful student was last to present her work.
She said to think of a truth in nature is absurd. The birds, the flowers, the trees, the soil - each of these entities had a history that preceded its current state, and each stage of that history was informed by both regeneration and violence, and political and environmental factors that impacted it directly and indirectly. If there was any truth to be discovered, it was that nature itself was not neutral, and any so-called purity was imposed upon it by those of us with the need to use nature as a shield from our own complicity with systems of destruction.”
― Helen of Nowhere
She said to think of a truth in nature is absurd. The birds, the flowers, the trees, the soil - each of these entities had a history that preceded its current state, and each stage of that history was informed by both regeneration and violence, and political and environmental factors that impacted it directly and indirectly. If there was any truth to be discovered, it was that nature itself was not neutral, and any so-called purity was imposed upon it by those of us with the need to use nature as a shield from our own complicity with systems of destruction.”
― Helen of Nowhere
“During those years, "the rest of Europe" was more than a campaign slogal. It stood for a specific way of life, one which was imitated more often than understood, and absorbed more than justified. Europe was like a long tunnel with an entrance illuminated by bright lights and flashing signs, and with a dark interior, invisible at first. When journey started, it didn't occur to anyone to ask where the tunnel ended, whether the light would fail, and what there was on the other side. It didn't occur to anyone to bring torches, or to draw maps, or to ask whether anyone ever makes it out of the tunnel, or if there is only one exit or several, and if everybody goes out the same way. Instead, we just marched on, and hoped the tunnel would remain bright, assuming we worked hard enough, and waited long enough, just as we used to wait in socialist queues - without minding the time that passed, without losing hope.”
― Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History
― Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History
Olga’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Olga’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
126 books
|
3 friends
1,085 books
|
37 friends
572 books
|
35 friends
208 books
|
5,000 friends
33 books
|
234 friends
69 books
|
86 friends
827 books
|
61 friends
222 books
|
316 friends
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